The Salton Sea Eco-Disaster – I cannot look awayOne of the most provocative and insightful bodies of artwork in the Telling Stories: a visual art exhibition is a series of photographs by Phyllis Schwartz. Although a great deal of her work is more abstract in nature and rooted in the historical techniques of photographic image making, this series is a departure for her. The images are very monochromatic and stark as well as being rivetingly close to their subject matter.

What has caused this departure, especially when the work has been simmering since the winter of 2011? Having witnessed the ecological destruction on the shores of the Salton Sea, California’s largest body of water, the images were just too graphic and unworldly. How does a visual artist work with a set of images that seem implausible, yet at the same time so captivating? What are the implications of creating a series around these images that wander between a work of art, a statement of witnessing and a political commentary on our economically driven ecological disasters?

Vacant

In the end one cannot really look away, as Phyllis Schwartz expresses in her subtitle, without becoming even more complicit than one already is creating these images. To look away is to do what is so often done, to pretend we are not part of the problem. We are collectively the authors of this series; even in Vancouver, the food grown in this area that flows 15,000 tons of phosphorus and nitrogen into this landlocked sea is the food we shop for on our grocery shelves. The cars we drive that are made in Mexico in the maquiladoras just across the border, emit a toxic stew mixed with sewage, and this flows down hill across the border into the Salton Sea. This artificial river is now the most toxic waterway in North America, we should not be looking away.

Schwartz’s images are simple yet draw in the viewer; they are micro-compositions of areas no larger than a dessert plate. Abstract in presentation and mostly black and white with hints of colour, one can not help but think of Edward Weston’s work and the intimacy he expressed with the objects he photographed. Yet the images are not as subtitle, and unlike Weston, the images are much less rooted in the post modern culture that favours irony while making allusions to knowledge. It also seems to lash out at the pseudo-modern world of around us where iPhones and social media often gives the impression that one is immersed when often one is overtaken or swallowed up.

Desiccated

As the viewer moves from one image to another, one begins to feel that something is amiss. What is the magnitude of the dead barnacles beach? Why are the fish mostly unconsumed by the other wild life in the area? Why have they not been cleaned up by local inhabitants? Having chosen to work at such an intimate range, the work hints at the extent of the problem without graphically showing the masses of dead fish that actually litter the shoreline. The artist here is reflecting our tendency to minimize and reduce things down so we do not see the scale of the problem. One cannot look away, but one does not want to see the scale, a scale might prove too challenging. The softness and almost abstract forms allow one to at momentarily escape before the mind lurches back to what is being presented. It moves the viewer to search out the subtext and the footnotes of this ecological metaphor of our current age.

On the Wall Series, photographed in Germany in 2015, will be part of the Telling Stories:a visual art exhibition opening on the 7th of November 2015. The exhibition will include photography, painting, sculpture, fibre art and other installations. It will feature the following nine artists: Alison Keenan, Phyllis Schwartz, Jim Friesen, Daphne Harwood, Sophi Liang, Colette Lisoway, Edward Peck, Debra Sloan and June Yun.

This is the BestB4 Collective’s latest exhibition, and it is graciously hosted by the Chinese Cultural Centre in their On-Tak Cheung Exhibition Gallery.

What Remains, a selection of Salton Sea lumen prints and digital photographs are on show in In the Earth, in the Sky, which Wednesday evening and runs until 04 November. More specifically, this exhibition shows the work of ten international artists dealing with the theme of death.

My work is a direct confrontation of death forces in the Salton Sea Region on the California-Mexican border where much of the North American produce is grown at great expense to the environment. While some efforts are in motion to reclaim areas of the Salton Sea and residents are expected to clean debris from the beaches, the salt sea continues to dehydrate causing the salinity level to rise which in turn challenges the Tilapia and other marine life to adapt or die. In the surrounding regions, residents have no choice but to purchase water that has been desalinated. My lumen prints record the traces and shadows of this dying seashore.

This exhibition is is presented by Äkkigalleria, a nomadic art gallery located in temporarily vacant storefronts in Jyväskylä, Finland. “Äkkigalleria was founded by visual artist Anna Ruth and graphic designer/photographer Juho Jäppinen, in 2009, out of the necessity to mobilize the visual arts in spur of the moment happenings. [They] strive to promote creative risk taking, to find new and imaginative ways of sharing art with the public and to bring art to different public spheres by recycling existing spaces.” https://www.facebook.com/pages/Äkkigalleria/144130014608?fref=ts

A selection of my Salton Sea photographs have been selected for exhibition in In the Earth, in the Sky (heavens), which will take place at the end of October. More specifically, this exhibition shows the work by artists dealing with the theme of death.

My interest in the Salton Sea speaks through my experimental photography used to document the many layers of death present on the shores of a dead body of water situated near the California/Mexican border. This shore of the largest body of salt water on the North American Continent is comprised of sand, crunching barnacles and the skeletal remains of dead marine life. I am drawn to this area because I cannot look away from this ecological killing field. Here, the hollow eyes of dead tilapia stare back at me with a message about time running out on the eco-clock. The traces and shadows on my lumen prints ask, “What remains?”